Douglas Arvidson is a past winner of the WICE/Paris Transcontinental International Short Story competition. His short fiction has been published in Paris, Prague, and in literary magazines in the United States and he was recently invited to be a staff writer for the Prague Revue, a cutting-edge, online literary journal (http://bit.ly/1mMT6ZC). The novels in his fantasy series, The Eye of the Eye of Stallion, include The Face in Amber,The Mirrors of Castaway Time, and A Drop of Wizard's Blood. His new novel, Brothers of the Fire Star, was selected as a finalist in the ForeWord Reviews 2012 Book of the Year national awards and as a finalist in three categories in the 2013 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards: Action Adventure Fiction, Historical Fiction, and Young Adult Fiction. It has become part of the pantheon of Pacific literature and is now included in school literature programs. Brothers of the Fire Star is an adventure story set in the Pacific during World War II and concerns two boys of different races and cultures who escape the island of Guam in a small sailboat when the Japanese army invades. They must then struggle to survive as they master the secrets of the ancient Pacific navigators. Appropriate for young adults as well as adult readers, Brothers of the Fire Star is available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/1j3axVk) and Crossquarter.com. Visit the author's website: douglasarvidson.com

Sunday, February 22, 2009

A Gray Day in Februrary

There's a reason February is the shortest month and today that reason is fully evident. But those complaints about this most miserable 28/29 days of the year have been filed before so I won't go there. Pour yourself a cuppa strong stuff and get on with it.

Of more interest are the headlines. Among the usual world-wide horrors, I see that Paris Hilton has been rewarded for her no-talent efforts to reach movie stardom. She's been given a Razzie. Poor thing. I wonder how she reacts to such public drubbings of her efforts to be something other than a rich and pretty party girl. How long can one survive the 'unbearable lightness of being?' Even the likes of Paris want to be taken seriously. It killed Marlyin Monroe and she had talent. And if the Razzies have been issued, the real Show--the Academy Awards must be close at hand. Tout cequi brille, n' est pas or--all that glitters is not gold.

Mr. Obama has been very busy getting his administration off to a rousing start and the American public seems to approve. Those poor cranky Republicans are honking and squeaking and snarling and gnashing their collective teeth. Talk about public drubbings. I heard an interesting observation the other day--Nixon was a moderate compared to the GOP folks that are out there squealing their tires now. Imagine. Where will this polarization of America take us? I suspect that the wisdom of the great middle of us--the vast population of moderates that is the real America and who voted the GOP off the island, will ultimately keep us on more-or-less a steady course (but didn't they vote in "W" twice?).

I'm 97 pages into the next book and have had some very fine luck with it this week. There's nothing quite like it when it flows.

By the way, the picture above is of a sign on the door of a restaurant in Kamakura, Japan. It would make a good title for a short story or a collection of short stories.

Two Blogs Going

I now have two blogs. One about anything I feel like writing about (douglasarvidson.blogspot.com) and the other about my new book(brothersofthefirestar.blogspot.com). I invite you to visit both. Why a blog dedicated to a book? I believe in Brothers of the Fire Star. It pretty much covers what I want to say about things; about brotherhood and courage and how bad war is for living and breathing people. It says what I want to say about how stupid it is that race and culture can keep those living and breathing people from liking each other and how necessary courage and tolerance are to our survival. In this book, my heros are two boys who have that special courage that allows them to survive against great odss. It allows them to embrace a powerful brotherhood despite the vast differences in their backgrounds. It is that courage, raw and simple, that brings them to their necessary end game. I developed this blog to describe what informed the writing of this book because I thought it might lend it some credence to my goals. In any event, I hope you enjoy the voyage you will take with Joseph and Napu as they meet their fates.